[HanCinema's Film Review] "Romance - Movie" + DVD Giveaway

Depression can come in many forms. For veteran cop Hyeong-joon (played by Cho Jae-hyun), it's the feeling that he failed as a husband and a father, and that no amount of heroic behavior can ever redeem him. For the well-bred Yoon-hee (played by Kim Ji-soo), it's having the promise of a rich high society life with a devoted significant other and yet being incapable of flashing a sincere smile. These two are ready to give up on life- and then they find each other.

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Tonally "Romance - Movie" is a fairly standard romantic melodrama, with all the usual genre conventions that implies. Hyeong-joon and Yoon-hee don't get hung up flowery words or explicit expressions of romantic affection. They both hide some very serious scars underneath their clothes. Even sexual titillation is mostly absent from "Romance - Drama", because the romance promised in the title is more about acceptance as our leads learn to feel less and less like broken, worthless human beings.

Yet in the backdrop, the usual crime / public figure conspiracy is brewing, for which there will be no timely escape for either of our two leads. The reason why they choose to love in such a destructive context is because for Hyeong-joon and Yoon-hee, it doesn't make a difference anymore. They're both at such a low point in their lives that annihiliation appears to be a blessing. It's only those little moments of being together that give Hyeong-joon and Yoon-hee the courage to fight through their storylines in the hopes of saving each other.

If this all sounds incredibly corny that's because "Romance - Movie" is in fact a very corny movie that's able to put on a decent show of pretension by using romance as a storytelling device to discuss depression. For all that, I was surprised by how much I liked the "Romance - Drama" overall. A lot of this is in the acting and the direction. Cho Jae-hyun and Kim Ji-soo are able to convey passion with subtle looks and touches. Even in the movie's more raucous moments their actions have a bittersweet edge, and that's OK, because scars linger even in the midst of acceptance.

The simplicity of the story ends up being a boon in this context. Since the villains are so clearly archetyped, it was easy for me to pay more attention to the emotional center of the relationship between the two leads. When such-and-such random character shows up for the sake of plot, I was always thinking, how does this relate to the possibility that maybe, just maybe, Hyeong-joon and Yoon-hee can beat the odds and have a happy ending?

Yet watching Yoon-hee teach Hyeong-joon how to dance, I appreciated how the real value in the story behind "Romance - Movie" was not the notion of happy endings, but rather those little moments of normalcy and feeling comfortable in their own skin, with no thoughts to greater causes. Love is worth living for- justice is worthy dying for. That's not really a platitude of much use in everyday life, yet oddly enough "Romance - Drama" makes it a convincing one.

Review by William Schwartz

"Romance - Movie" is directed by Moon Seung-wook and features Cho Jae-hyun and Kim Ji-soo.

 

Romance - Movie